On Writing
by Stephen King
List Price:
Our Price: $3.94
You Save: $4.05 (51%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.67 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen KingEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Published: 2002-07-01
ISBN: 0743455967
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Book Reviews of On Writing
Book Review: A must read for aspiring and accomplished writers - everywhere.
Summary: 5 Stars
I found King's book on writing both helpful and highly entertaining. One of the greatest storytellers of our time allows us an insight into the do's and dont's of being a professional writer.
This book is masterfully blended with useful information, and an autobiography of King's life from childhood memories to today. His own life is as fascinating and complex as many of his novels.
I class Stephen King's book on writing a true gem, a very rare find - highly reccomended.
By Stuart McCallum (author) Beyond my ControlBeyond my Control: One Man's Struggle with Epilepsy, Seizure Surgery & Beyond
Summary of On Writing
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing."King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room.... In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in the rear of the house. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind.... A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been....In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza....I got another desk -- it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave....I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about ... and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job.... It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around. --
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Stephen king books
From the Borderlands: Stories of Terror and Madnessby Stephen King, Whitley Strieber
Warner Books; Published: 2004-09-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops:
On Writingby Stephen King
Pocket; Published: 2002-07-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.82
Price in other shops:
The Gingerbread Girlby Stephen King
Simon & Schuster Audio; Published: 2008-05-06; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $10.17
Price in other shops:
It (Signet Books)by Stephen King
Signet; Published: 1987-08-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.44
Price in other shops:
Duma Key: A Novelby Stephen King
Scribner; Published: 2008-01-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Elements of Writing Fiction - Characters & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing)by Orson Scott Card
Writers Digest Books; Published: 1999-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.77
Price in other shops:
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints (Write Great Fiction)by Nancy Kress
Writers Digest Books; Published: 2005-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.20
Price in other shops:
On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)by William K. Zinsser
Collins; Published: 2006-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.24
BECOMING A WRITERby Dorothea Brande
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 1981-03-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.60
Price in other shops:
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Pocket Classics)by Natalie Goldberg
Shambhala; Published: 2006-01-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Printby Renni Browne, Dave King
Collins; Published: 2004-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
Plot & Structure: (Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish) (Write Great Fiction)by James Scott Bell
Writers Digest Books; Published: 2004-10-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.69
Price in other shops:
How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling (How to Write a Damn Good Novel)by James N. Frey
St. Martin's Press; Published: 1987-12-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.15
Price in other shops:
The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pileby Noah Lukeman
Fireside; Published: 2005-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Lifeby Anne Lamott
Anchor; Published: 1995-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops: